this is why self/e-publishing should be put down like a rabid dog.....

I agree. I think there's going to be a gazzilion Rebecca Blacks to every one Radiohead self releasing In Rainbows. There is going to be someone though, who's going to legitimize the medium. It's bound to happen.

We've already seen that it can be a huge sales force with that Amber something-rather who writes twinky vampire shit. Sold 4 million dollars worth of 2.99 novels, all self published, all without professional editing.

I'm just a purist i guess. And a realist. A purist and a realist.

If you can't see that there's a shift coming after everything the music industry has gone through then you're a fantasyist.

I've gotta say, I agree with McKay on these points.

But I didn't always.

As recently as 5 years ago, I would've said that if you self-publish fiction you're probably shooting yourself in the foot. Get good enough and keep putting your work out there (queries to agents, short stories to lit mags) and a legitimate publisher will pick you up. Keep getting better until you can publish a first novel with a traditional publisher, preferably a big one. Then you'll have credibility AND you'll have good distribution channels that you don't have to worry about.

That view was a little naive, even five years ago. I've since learned that big publishers spend a huge portion of their marketing budgets on their top-tier names--the handful of authors that you wouldn't expect to need it.

And even the biggest publishers expect the up-and-coming talent to be good at self-promotion. Instead of expecting them to finance a big tour and give you handlers and tell you where to show up to sign books, they probably won't put you out on tour at all. It isn't cost effective. Book tours are only profit-turning for the very biggest names.

Publishers, for the most part, simply won't spend a lot of money staging your launch and crossing their fingers that a big push from them will turn you into one of the top sellers. Rather, you have to get big, almost on your own, though a sort of groundswell effect. Word-of-mouth and underground channels and unofficial buzz. When those things hit a certain tipping point, the publisher may take an interest in financing an official book tour. Until then, they likely won't. Lots of traditionally published authors languish with nothing like the marketing support they expected from the publisher. And when their first book doesn't make back its advance, they get dropped.

What I've learned is that getting good enough at your craft and supplicating yourself to agents and publishers until you're "discovered" and from there it's all on auto-pilot and other people manage the business details and all you have to do is sit back and write ... well, that's a fantasy. Even before the revolution in e-publishing provided such a juicy alternative, it mostly didn't work that way for the huge majority of traditionally published authors.

Whether you go with a traditional old-school publisher or you self-produce--or you do something hybrid and in-between--you'll find out that an enormous portion of the detail management and grunt work and push that will make you a successfully published author falls directly upon your own shoulders.

That some fast and shoddy work is pouring into the new e-reader market is a predictable and unfortunate side effect of something that to my mind is positive, overall. Something that will work itself out.

Keep in mind that Shakespeare was a popular entertainer, producing new plays at a furious pace for the few coppers that would come his way from each ass perched on a seat. Yet his legacy remains.

Likewise, keep in mind that Walt Whitman self-published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Then he included Emerson's "I greet you at the beginning of a great career" - taking those words from a private letter and using them publicly as a blurb, without permission, much to the esteemed philosopher's consternation. Whitman even went so far as to review his own work under pseudonyms, pushing his earliest notoriety in any way he could. He was a shameless self-promoter, believing vastly more in the value of his own work than most others did at the time. And yet, his work has stayed with us. And it's considered to have lasting value.

It's really never been so simple as assuming that self-publishing is for self-important hacks who lack the patience even to edit themselves. It's likewise never been so simple as assuming that traditional publishing confers a gold standard of excellence. Either way you go, the quality of your work is largely up to you.

And these days, with the Internet for distribution and the e-publishing formats and e-readers taking off, it's never been more cost-effective and realistic to reach a large audience fast without begging notice from the old-school publishing houses and without employing a dozen middle men in the process. It's realistic now to publish in a way where you get 70% of the profits instead of 10% and you can do that and still reach a huge audience, instead of the handful of people who file into a mom & pop bookstore in your old hometown.

Sure, that means a fast avenue for a lot of hastily written and poorly edited material. But it doesn't mean only that. We're still in the wild west days of these new technologies. New ways of vetting and choosing what we read will emerge, as surely as new technologies create the platform and the access that demands it.

That's what's great about being a writer. If you're really good enough, you can surpass all the avenues you're normally required to run through if the right person sees it.

Mark Twain essentially self-published his first few books and had them sold by door to door salesmen.

There's no waiting about it. Do your work and push your shit as usual; waiting around gets you nothing. I'm not ever gonna self-publish. It's a personal conviction.

The case we're making is that the business is changing in certain ways that parallel recent changes in the music industry. And we've augmented that point further with a few footnotes from history that show there's never been a clean line of separation, where traditionally published means "legitimate" and self-produced means "not legitimate."

That idea cracks apart under any real contact with the facts.

So, choose whatever you like for yourself, but don't be arrogant and absolutist about it. Don't make sweeping generalizations that self-publishing is "absurd."

Calling it absurd says it's a bad choice--beyond that, a ludicrous choice--for all people at all times, regardless of circumstances. Anyone who would go that route is less than you.

And there's no way you can back up that opinion.

I don't know if you've spent an hour on the phone grilling a New York City literary agent with 30 years of experience in the industry. But I have. Five years ago, if you were approaching her with a second novel manuscript, and you'd self-published your first one, that would be at least a tiny black mark in her book against you. A matter of prejudice. It would suggest you're impatient and too intent on doing your own thing to benefit from her professional experience. She might have even jumped to the conclusion that you shopped the first novel around with other agents and no one wanted it because you were not a professional cut. Those were her biases five years ago.

Now, however, a self-published first novel as a fact in isolation is a neutral fact in her mind. It's not an automatic black mark. If that novel didn't go anywhere and you barely made back your publication costs, it's almost a non-factor. Let her know, of course, because full-disclosure to a potential agent is vital. But don't worry about it.

On the other hand, if your self-published first novel did go somewhere ... maybe it won a contest you entered for the best self-published novel that year and maybe you've sold 30,000 copies through Amazon and your own Web site and you've got 15,000 Twitter followers or blog readers who all want to read your next book... that much push and notoriety gained through your own efforts and the power of the Internet... things like that actually get an agent wet hot excited about you these days. It would make you look like a hot ticket and make you vastly more interesting to agents in the current market than the potential author who's never been significantly published.

Therefore, it's reasonable to infer that self-publishing is already picking up increased legitimacy in industry eyes, if only for the scale at which it's now possible. And crossing over from successfully self-published to big traditional contracts for subsequent work is getting more and more common.

Agents and editors want to know if you've got what it takes to sell some books. They know they can't do all the selling for you. What's more, they aren't devoting their days to slow, careful reading, like sifting for gold, then putting all of their energy and drive into a manuscript based on the quality of the writing alone. That's an idealized notion of what they do. In reality, they don't have time. They spend all day, every work day, between meetings and contracts and e-mail and phone calls. They read new manuscripts on the train while commuting. They read new manuscripts over the weekend. If you've got a BA in English or the equivalent, and a fair amount of leisure reading time, you're probably a better judge of literature yourself, because you've got more time to savor it.

Editors and agents are good readers, for the most part, but they aren't the ultimate arbiters of taste for our society. Their reading of manuscripts is often rushed and perfunctory. The two advantages they have are loads of experience and a better working knowledge of their industry and what will sell within a given market.

I'm not saying that everyone should self-publish first and maybe court agents and big contracts later on. I'm just pointing out that it's possible. I'm also not suggesting that absolutely everyone who writes should choose to self-publish, at all. It isn't for everyone. But put some brackets around the argument you're trying to make if your opinion isn't supported by interviews with industry professionals and other forms of direct research.

You are confusing "good" with "marketable". Total argument fail.

The Cult is one big argument fail.

No, it isn't.

Yes it is!

Only when you're involved, Jake, because you're perpetually wrong.

Most indipendant bands are terrible, therefore only the major recording labels should put out CDs.

Yeah, that's a great point, Tuffy.

I think we really need to start looking at the book industry more like we look at the music and film industries.

The book industry is still running on old traditions, and I think it's probably best that it starts moving to a more modern mindset. Obviously, some traditions are worth keeping. Others are simply archaic and need to be quashed.

Most independent bands i've heard are really good, most independent books are not good. Your point is moot. Stop defending crap.

I think we really need to start looking at the book industry more like we look at the music and film industries.

I agree. Let's kill it with piracy.

If you think most unsigned bands are good, you should sample more. Go to myspae and listen to a few tracks by every band you can find. Then defend that position.

Also, you may want to look up the definition of "moot".

I'm defending the opportunity for there to be good indie books/authors. And for people's snobbish opinions, like yours, to be proven wrong. Sure, it may take time for an decent indie scene of literature to appear, but the music industry has a massive headstart. There's been independent music for decades. The whole independent literature thing hasn't been going very long. Give it time. And there will be stuff out there that is just as good, if not better, than the mainstream, because, like in the music industry, independents can take risks and go places that mainstream presses are too fearful to wander into. And, really, independent stuff can just have more soul and be more honest than commercial stuff, for those reasons.

i'm really glad you typed it as 'moot' and not 'mute', it's a pet peeve.

it's the little things, cult.

This simile is like a bumblebee scarf!

Also, Stephen, all of this, particularly the definition of "moot".

–adjective
1.
open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point.
2.
of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic.
3.
Chiefly Law . not actual; theoretical; hypothetical.

You say "stop defending crap" as if to say, "there's no argument," but you say it's moot which means "arguable."

/contradiction

You're mad if you think there isn't already piracy in literature. Sure, it's not to the same scale as it is in the music or film industries, but it's there. And it'll only get worse with the rise of the e-book. But, same with music, who cares really? It's about getting the art in front of eyes that appreciate it. I'd be happy to sell one copy of a book and have them give it to 10 people because they loved it enough to share it. I've never been so naive to think I could live off being an author anyway. I'd rather the fame than the fortune.

Getting into writing for the fame is just as dumb as getting into it for the fortune.

I never said I was getting into it for fame. Don't put words in my mouth. I said, I'd rather the fame than the fortune. Two very different ideas.

He didn't say you said you were. Don't put words in his mouth.

Oh, here we go.

What?

You. The usual Ritt-flavoured smart-ass-ism. Starting arguments and proving people wrong just for the fucking sake of it. Frankly, it's getting kind of dull.

What do you expect? He's a little kid. This is what little kids do when nothing else is going on.

Fuck did I do?!

One day, God willing, we'll be able to respond with jpegs and gifs in real life.

LOL proving people wrong in arguments is mean. And what argument did I start anyway? This thread was two pages of argument before I even touched it. Whatcha so mad fer?

Yeah, calm down Emo'donnell.

Nice. Very nicely done, sir.

i bet all this arguing has made y'all thirsty.

i'm serving tea and you fuckers can't do anything to stop me.

Is it a mainstream brand of tea? Or did you formulate your own artsy underground tea?

I'd love a cup. What've you got in that pot?

Just drink the damn tea! It's delicious, trust me.

*sips on the tea*

Dammit. I burnt my tongue.

Oh anyone can make tea. Not impressed.

Your mom-and-pop brand tea is terrible because I heard once that this guy made some tea using hedge-clippings and it sucked. Only Lipton should be allowed. Since they sell the most, they are the only ones good at it.

Also.